


A woman's world

by lotsofstuffandpaper



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Women, Badass SHIELD Agents, Fights, Marvel Universe, Pain, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 16:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3454367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotsofstuffandpaper/pseuds/lotsofstuffandpaper





	1. Strategy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



Smash first and then think. It is the only strategy Peggy Carter has ever had.

Peggy never developed strategies the way it was expected of her. As a young girl she was supposed to have strategies on how to best present herself,

how to exceed at school, how to learn Russian and German and how to make everyone perceive her as the perfect child. Later a strategy for reeling in suitable husbands was supposed to be in place, just in case things didn’t work out.

As a nurse she actually did have strategies, but none of them were her own, they were just borrowed from people who had already found their place in the world.

So instead of laying out plans and devising meticulous routines she went with her gut. It was messy and painful and she was afraid it would swallow her whole more often than she liked, but she loved the rush and excitement. When she joined the army there was more. More rush, more excitement. More strategies that weren’t hers, only this time she understood.

She knew what held the plan together, how it worked and also how it didn’t work. After the war she felt empty. There were no more plans, no more strategies. The S.S.R. had no place for her.

She was lost without a map, a soldier with no purpose.

In the end she would take whatever she could get and claw her way through. It is the one strategy that has always worked.


	2. Home

The Black Widow has no home. Not anymore. No city, no country, no home. Inside her head are battlefields, ripped open wounds, sewn up and patched together too many times to properly hold.

They were ravaged and burnt to the ground before they were built up again. Some are still burning, the flames gently licking on her soul, dragging it deeper into the red. Blood is everywhere. In her ledger. On her hands. Seeping through the fabric of her shirt. The blood is pulsing underneath her skin, she can feel it running through her fingers. Someone is gripping her arm, talking to her.

She can hear the words echoing in her skull, bouncing off the sides, endlessly back and forth. Natasha. Natasha. Natasha. They never stick; just keep floating around, a soft voice grazing the bone. There is too much of everything, a frantic mass jumbled together, a cluster of emotions and memories, of things she was supposed to forget and things she can’t remember.

Some things are on the surface, glaring and bright, sparkling like fresh blood and gunshots. Some are far away, so far she wonders if they ever were real at all. The women others wanted her to be. The women she chose to be. The weapon others turned her into. And somewhere deep inside the girl with no parents, no conscience, no home. More words are sinking in.

The voice is different, warmer, but more desperate. It might be home. Natasha. The name feels nice.


	3. Intervene

He blocks Jemma’s punch to his face with his forearm. She tries again, this time going for his ribs. Her fist strikes hard bones under a thin layer of flesh and muscle.

Fitz curves inwards just a little to stave off the impact. Her next target is the other side of his ribcage. She hits him again, but suddenly his hand grabs her upper arm, his fingers digging into her biceps and twisting her arm behind her back. His other hand is pushing down her shoulder.

A grunt of frustration escapes her throat. The sun is blazing down on them; their shirts are soaked with sweat. His grip on her arm is slippery and the sweaty skin is hard to hold on to.

The throbbing of her muscles goes far beyond her right arm. Her back aches and her legs feel like they will tumble to the ground any moment.

Someone should intervene before they tear each other apart, but no one shows up. All she can hear is someone repeatedly whispering her name, urging her to please wake up.   

She wakes with a gasp, and slowly the anger from the dream is replaced by guilt and the desperate desire to fix this nightmare.

Jemma wants to ask Fitz for help because they have always fixed things together, but they are not together anymore. For the first time she thinks that maybe her mother was right when she told her that there are people who shine brighter on their own.   

 


	4. Enforcement

There was a challenge May would give herself when she was about eight years old. She would climb to the highest spot on the monkey bars and hang there for as long as possible.

No falling allowed. One time she hung up there so long, the next day lifting her arms hurt terribly. Since then she has been familiar with force. Forcing your mind to essentially defeat itself and ignore all the signals your body was giving. You had to keep pushing or would lose. Later she figured out that ignoring problems made things harder, made them grow into something with a twisted, tangled existence of its own. She stopped ignoring pain and learnt to let herself feel it without falling apart. Now she knows exactly what gnaws itself through her heart with vicious little teeth and aggressive claws. No one else does, but they don’t need to.

They need her to cross off the enemy force like ticking off boxes in a survey, to be the cavalry and clean up the mess they made.

Skye is a mess they made.

She can’t change that, but she can make sure they don’t mess her up even more.                            

S.H.I.E.L.D. trained her small body to be powerful, forceful and strong, but she knew since she was eight that she needed more than that to beat her enemies. Enforcement is more than force, to May it is protection.

She will protect Skye, because she knows how it feels to be abandoned by S.H.I.E.L.D..


	5. Logic

They are sliding through her fingers effortlessly. She barely notices how the digits move up and down, how they twist or bend slightly to accommodate the pens, to let them slip between the gaps and yet hold them safely in place. Her hands are still shaking, but the pens never drop.  

Bobbi is staring intently at the screen in front of her, her eyes quickly scanning the data for logical clues, for any underlying pattern, for a sensible explanation that will tell her which species she is dealing with.                 

She likes untangling a web of seemingly random clues and putting them together into one picture.

A picture which can be explained with patterns and logical connections, which can be broken down into tiny pieces and all of them are needed to make sense of the picture.

She likes the chain that weaves through these facts. Something in the search for these patterns, for the logic in the chaos calms her down. Similar to the repetitive motion of twirling the pens it gives her comfort.

When Fury ordered her to accompany Strike Team Delta on a mission to identify the various species they needed to retrieve, she didn’t expect having to fight.                              

She didn’t expect she would be good at it, but when Natasha tossed her a piece of metal pipe and yelled at her to turn around, her fingers moved around the pipe the same way they did around a pen.                                       

Unlike her mind, they were not limited by misunderstanding.                       


	6. Divide

Apparently letting people die gets you the job. Those are the whispers that creep through the halls in headquarters, the hushed breaths that jump from ear to ear through the entire S.H.I.E.L.D food chain and settle inside Maria’s skin, making her shiver and glance over her shoulder even more often.

She wants to tell them that she is sorry but she can’t. Maybe she is ice cold, just like her bruised fists aiming to get a hit in on her sparring partner. She feels like Fury is ripping her up through the air, so fast she can barely breathe. The faster she rises, the bigger the divide becomes. The gap is too wide, like a crack blown into the ground by an earthquake. She cannot reach across without falling down.

Coincidence. That’s what May says. Maria knows better. Knows that Fury made her second in command because of the choices she made during that mission. He told her promotions were not given to those who deserved them. They were given to those who could do what needed to be done. It scares her that she can do the things that need to be done.

She can choose to let four people die. So maybe she doesn’t deserve this, but maybe that isn’t the point. Her back hits the mat with a loud thump.

Between ragged breaths Maria chokes out that she is alright. But you’re not is all Natasha says as she drops down on the floor next to her.  


End file.
